Jonah Peretti is one of the smartest web publishers out there. And Buzzfeed is an aggressive and dynamic company.
An employer would be a complete fool to let an image like college partying influence their hiring decisions.
Personally, as a print journalist, I always found the most interesting stories to be the ones hacks talked about in the bar after work.
No picture, no footage, no story. The people these days require some visual evidence in order to believe what they read.
I don’t really mind playing tabloid monster. I always liked those characters in the old movies.
We believe that the best Web content optimization strategy is something as old as journalism itself: the shocking truth and the authentic opinion.
It’s harder now for journalists to do stories about billionaires, like Peter Thiel, without having at the back of their minds the fear that maybe somebody deep-pocketed, you know, with limited resources is going to come after us and can my organization afford to defend me?
I have to come to terms with the paternalism of American business. Companies are expected to take on so many social responsibilities which are the province of the state in Europe.
Henry Blodget does occasionally have a new idea. If you’re making a point about aggregation or the emptiness of modern journalism, he’s far from the best target. Try Huffpo – or Gawker writers whose souls have been corroded by irony.
Google and others truncate headlines at 70 characters. On the Manti Teo story, Deadspin’s scoop fell down the Google search results, overtaken by copycat stories with simpler headlines. Deadspin’s headline was 118 characters. Vital information – ‘hoax’ – was one of the words that was cut off.
That’s always been my test for what makes a story: is this something journalists would gossip with each other about?
Ben Smith’s quick-hit campaign ‘scoops’ are about as viral as cat videos. That fits with Buzzfeed.
I want to institutionalise and automate chequebook journalism.
Forget about someone’s resume or how they present themselves at a party. Can they blog or not? The blog doesn’t lie.
Superior writers, videographers and other content makers want to work with their own kind and for their own kind.
Apple makes beautiful products. I own a Mac Pro, a Mac Book, a Mac Mini, an iPad, an iPhone, pretty much the entire collection.
Your writers write these pieces about meaningless startups, meaningless apps and meaningless companies.
Relentless and cynical traffic-trawling is bad for the soul.
Web media needs to move to TV metaphor – with full-screen imagery and other content interrupted with full-screen ads.
Google demotes search results that don’t get clicked on.